Filling Of Ditches Suspended At Scripps Site

Environmentalists Ask Judge To Halt All Construction At Mecca Farms.

Palm Beach County has agreed to stop filling ditches at Mecca Farms after a federal judge's ruling that the permit that allowed such work was flawed.

But in a written argument Monday in a key legal battle over the Scripps Florida development, environmentalists asked U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks to go a step further.

Any construction at the site of the planned Scripps campus must be halted and the Army Corps of Engineers should be forced to conduct a lengthy environmental investigation, said lawyers for the Florida Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club.

At issue is an Army Corps permit that allowed the county and Scripps to develop 535 acres of the 1,919-acre Mecca Farms, the planned site of a taxpayer-funded biotech village. That permit was invalidated Sept. 30, when Middlebrooks issued a decision that said the Army Corps should have studied the overall environmental effects rather than those associated with just one segment of the project.

What to do about construction, which is already under way, was the subject of written arguments submitted by Scripps, Palm Beach County, the Army Corps and the environmental groups. Oral arguments are in Miami next Tuesday.

The invalidated Army Corps permit would have allowed the county to fill 21.3 acres of ditches on the southern half of Mecca Farms, which is north of The Acreage.

About 19 acres of the ditches have been filled so far, county Scripps manager Shannon LaRocque said.

The other two-plus acres will remain untouched until the permit dispute is settled, but that won't impede the $137 million project to build Scripps' 100-acre campus, she said.

The larger question: Should Scripps be able to build at all?

The court should "preserve the status quo" at Mecca Farms, argued environmental lawyers.

"Courts should not shrink from halting construction of projects which are being erected in clear violation of the law," the environmentalists' 15-page brief said.

Continued construction would preclude any alternate sites from being considered because "once this die is cast the cost and logistics of choosing an alternative site with `less adverse impact on the aquatic ecosystem' would prove unfeasible."

Citing a precedent, environmentalists said the "difficulty of stopping a bureaucratic steamroller, once started ... is a perfectly proper factor for a district court to take into account."

By contrast, lawyers for Scripps argued that the court should not stop construction.

The judge should simply remand the case to the Army Corps and have the agency conduct additional environmental analysis, the eight-page brief said.

Josh Hafenbrack can be reached at jhafenbrack@sun-sentinel.com or 561-243-6522.